Red Burgundy 2016 and 2015: Two Terrific but Very Different Vintages
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
Despite extreme weather conditions in both 2016 and 2015, Burgundy’s Côte d’Or has produced an outstanding pair of back-to-back vintages studded with hauntingly beautiful reds.
Ten years from now, when their painful memories of the arduous 2016 growing season have receded, Burgundy’s producers may be able to enjoy their wines without nightmare flashbacks of the frost blanket and recurring mildew that plagued the vintage. Happily, Burgundy-loving civilians, who are naturally more concerned with the price and availability of their favorite wines than with the challenges of producing them, will derive great pleasure from the precise, perfumed, suavely tannic 2016s from the outset. One caveat: following a small crop of very ripe, large-scaled wines in 2015 that are quickly disappearing from retail shelves around the world, if they made it that far in the first place, the more classic ‘16s won’t be easy to find either. (Relief is on the horizon, though, as the Côte d’Or miraculously dodged frost in April of 2017 and has finally produced a full crop of wines.)
Booming downtown Nuits-Saint-Georges
The 2016 Growing Season and Harvest
Following an extremely mild December-through-February period and a cool March, warmer temperatures at the end of that month led to a normal budburst. But hopes for a generous crop after a series of short vintages were soon to be shattered. Conditions on the evening of April 26 and the following morning provided a perfect storm for the most damaging frost on the Côte d’Or since 1981. The evening of the 26th was humid, with some light rainfall. The skies then cleared and temperatures plunged during the night, with dawn breaking clear in penetrating sunlight. The unforgiving sun burned the young buds and green shoots that were covered with frozen water droplets – think of the effect of rays through a magnifying glass. Damage was frequently greatest at high altitude, as this is where the rising sun strikes the vines first. (Frédéric Lafarge in Volnay told me that he has never experienced frost damage that climbed as high into the premier crus as in 2016.) Lower spots were often protected by early-morning mist and thus escaped the worst effects of the sun. Conditions were calm; there was little or no wind to dissipate the heavy frost.
Burgundy’s numerous combes, little east-west valleys that cut through the limestone escarpment of the Côte d’Or – and which are frequently the source of cooling breezes during the heat of summer – were conduits for calamity in late April, allowing a massive pool of frigid air to flow in. Damage was sustained over a huge area stretching from Chassagne-Montrachet in the south to Marsannay in the north. The slightest differences in temperature on the morning of the 27th could make all the difference. Every additional negative degree Celsius hurt, as some vines could survive -1 degree C. but not -2 or -3 – to say nothing of the -5 and -6 degrees C. that some growers reported in their coldest sites.
Obviously, topography was critical here, and even man-made walls offered some protection to adjacent vines. I reported last summer in some detail on frost damage suffered in the posh white wine villages of the Côte de Beaune (as well as on the Pernand side of the Corton hill and in much of Savigny-lès-Beaune). But the Côte de Nuits was also hit hard. Prémeaux suffered significant frost losses, but vineyards on the north side of the town of Nuits-Saint-Georges were largely spared. While much of Vosne-Romanée proper was relatively unscathed, Echézeaux and Grands-Echézeaux were devastated by frigid air coming in through the Combe d’Orveau, as was much of the higher portion of Clos Vougeot and the higher-altitude vineyards in the southwest part of Chambolle-Musigny, including Musigny itself. In fact, Chambolle-Musigny (along with the southern half of Marsannay), was the hardest-hit village on the Côte de Nuits, with very cold air also entering through the Combe d’Ambin at the top of the village. Yet Morey-Saint-Denis was barely touched by frost, with yields here generally normal – and in some cases the highest they had been since 1999!
